nseyum1/afaan-translator

A production-style translator for Afaan Oromo and languages across Ethiopia, East Africa, and the diaspora. Built at HackerSquad AI Hack Day with OpenAI Codex. # Afaan Translator A production-style translator for Afaan Oromo and the languages people use across Ethiopia, East Africa, and the diaspora. The app translates text, checks meaning with a back-translation review, retries once when quality is low, supports common offline phrases, and can scan and translate PDFs. ## Features - Afaan Oromo with English, Amharic, Tigrinya, Somali, Swahili, Arabic, French, and Spanish - Private backend API key handling - Translate and verify loop with quality score - One automatic improvement pass when score is below 8 - PDF upload and document translation - Low data mode - Offline phrasebook for common phrases - Larger text and high contrast accessibility modes - Copy, share, and download translated results ## Why There Is A Backend The OpenAI API key must not live in browser code. This version keeps the key on the server in `.env`, then the frontend calls local backend routes: - `POST /api/translate` - `POST /api/pdf` ## Run Locally 1. Create `.env` from the example: ```bash cp .env.example .env ``` 2. Put your key in `.env`: ```bash OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-key-here PORT=8000 ``` 3. Start the app: ```bash npm start ``` 4. Open: ```text 127.0.0.1 ``` ## Demo Script “I built Afaan Translator, a safer production-style translation product for Afaan Oromo. It supports Oromo with English, Amharic, Tigrinya, Somali, Swahili, Arabic, French, and Spanish. The frontend is friendly and accessible, while the backend keeps the OpenAI API key private. The app translates text, verifies meaning by checking it back against the original, retries once if quality is low, and can also scan and translate PDFs.” ## Important Rotate any API key that was pasted into chat or shown during recording. Do not commit `.env`.